Opening of the session
“Thank you Mr President and good morning delegates
Thank you for giving us the floor. We are taking the floor on behalf of all the Observers present – including DSCC, the Pew Charitable Trusts, DOSI, Greenpeace, Oceans North, IUCN, and The Ocean Foundation – to address your proposal about restricting observer interventions.
We thank Costa Rica for their observations on this proposal and for their offer together with the delegation of Chile, as facilitators of the institutional WG.
We also thank New Zealand for their intervention, requesting targeted and appropriate interventions, and for their request for reconsideration, as well as the support of the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Canada and the United States.
Mr President, already and of our own accord, we had already planned to keep interventions within 3 minutes, to keep them targeted and to combine with other observer delegations to ensure we avoid repetition.
We believe that this proposal to exclude observers from making observations on specific regulations. would be inconsistent with the procedure adopted in the UN, and specifically in BBNJ, where civil society made short and structured interventions on each article – the equivalent of each regulation.
Because the Area and its resources are the common heritage of humankind, it is as – or more – important that as diverse and broad a group of stakeholders as possible have a voice in these proceedings.
Mr President, this is a matter of enormous public interest throughout the world, as it concerns the common heritage of humankind. We would like to highlight that we collectively represent several million people concerned with the deep sea and its health, and who have the right to be heard when the fate of the common heritage of humankind is being decided.
We hope that our proposal to keep interventions short and targeted on each draft regulation, and combine to the greatest extent possible is acceptable to delegations.”
Draft regulation 97
“A very brief intervention on a matter of principle regarding certain reflections on gender parity and geographical representation in the roster of inspectors. We are in a period of transition that requires a certain degree of social effort in order to achieve the balance that would ultimately optimise the economic functioning of our societies. Representation is absolutely essential to ensuring that those who are underrepresented in certain sectors today reach for things that they would not have reached for 40 years ago. We therefore fully support the position of the distinguished delegate of Sierra Leone.”